North Carolina almost never loses when it plays NCAA tournament games in its home state. Saturday, the Tar Heels will play LSU in a second-round South Regional game at Greensboro Coliseum, a neutral court in name only. Is that fair?

One thousand victories.
To the rest of us, it is an extraordinary milestone where success and longevity intersect, a plateau that no basketball coach at a four-year college program man or woman ever has reached before. But to Pat Summitt, it's just another number.

Now that Tennessee women's coach Pat Summitt has achieved her latest milestone, becoming the first college basketball coach to get 1,000 wins with Thursday's 73-43 victory against Georgia, the question becomes how many more games might she win before finishing.

Wake Forest's Ishmael Smith vividly recalls his basketball team's humiliating defeat at North Carolina nearly two years ago. "Michael Jordan was at the game," Smith, a 6-0 guard, said this week. Smith also keeps in mind what his coach, the late Skip Prosser, told him when Smith, then a freshman, came to the bench and buried his face in his jersey.

Kenyon Martin scored 26 points, Carmelo Anthony had 21 points and 13 rebounds, and the Denver Nuggets beat the Chicago Bulls 114-101 on Sunday night. Chauncey Billups and Nene also added 21 points as Denver moved to 8-2 since the acquisition of Billups.